


I Want To Guard Your Dreams And Visions

by luninosity



Category: X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, American Revolution, Erik and Charles are generally awesome, Erik scares new recruits, Love, M/M, Protectiveness, Revolutionary War, background misuse of historical figures, made for each other in any time, mention of First Class main characters - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-09
Updated: 2013-02-09
Packaged: 2017-11-28 16:08:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/676307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I was reading Barbara Hambly’s Abigail Adams mystery novels, and then Erik/Charles American Revolutionary War AU happened. Little snippet in which they share a tent, drink coffee, and provide support to each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Want To Guard Your Dreams And Visions

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Bruce Springsteen’s “Born To Run”, just because it came up on iTunes and seemed to work! I rarely write real AU, so hopefully it came out decent!

_Thunder?_ was Erik’s first thought, at the distant lowering boom; then, swiftly, _but it’s not even raining yet…_

 _Cannon. Not close_. Charles reappeared on the wings of the words, face drawn in the light of the lantern he was carrying. In deference to his wounded shoulder, he had the lantern in his right hand; typically, he’d opted to carry that instead of his pistol.

Erik opened the tent-flap for him, and thought, frustration warring with affection, oh, Charles…

“Thank you, and the General sends his regards.” Charles sat down on the narrow bed, crosslegged and somehow pulling off the appearance of contentment through bandages and weariness and cramped drafty accommodations. The army of the newly proclaimed United States had many ideals, and little money.

“I could’ve gone with you.” Despite all of those inescapable facts, the same contentment tugged persistently at Erik’s heart: Charles was here and safe, and they were together.

He could tell that Charles picked that one up as well, from the smile in blue eyes, when they met his own.

“You were busy intimidating the new recruits when I got the message.” Charles accepted the offer of coffee, black and evilly strong, and looked at it pathetically. “What I wouldn’t give for actual tea…”

The words, in that accent, made Erik pause, coming over to sit beside him. He loved Charles with his entire heart, of course. Knew precisely what Charles had given up, coming to join him on this side of the fight for freedom. Knew that Charles was here not only out of love for Erik, but because of a genuine belief in the rightness of the cause, commitment that rivaled Erik’s own.

He knew as well what Charles’s friends and family on the other side of the lines, across the ocean, would be saying. The same things, and worse, that the Americans said of the turncoat Benedict Arnold. And not all the volunteers in their own camp would ever be convinced to trust a young man with eerie perspicacity and a tea-and-crumpets accent, even if that man were one of the great Washington’s advisors.

But Charles knew all that as well. Erik wondered fleetingly whether he ever listened to those thoughts, at night, stretching telepathic curiosity out to seek his home, his mother, his stepfather, in the lonely dark. If so, he never said what he might’ve found.

“My family, in fact, is precisely the issue at hand.” Charles wiggled his arm in its sling, a product of a late-night skirmish, his own perpetual dislike of edged weaponry, and his equally determined desire to leap into the fray at Erik’s side even when Erik was perfectly fine and entirely capable of taking out fifteen redcoats on his own if that meant keeping Charles out of harm’s way.

_Yes, you were doing brilliantly. One of them was about to hit you with that tree branch, even after you took away his gun and sword._

_He was supposed to be unconscious, and that didn’t mean YOU needed to get hit with it—!_ Out loud, he asked, “Family?” and Charles sighed. “Cain.”

“…here?”

“Here.” Charles considered the coffee again. “Do we have any rum? I suspect I may need it.” _Very much here, in fact. Fighting in the British lines and causing a distressing number of casualties among our men. That was why the General asked to see me tonight._

Wordlessly, Erik poured a generous amount of rum into the coffee. Plucked it out of Charles’s hand, took a sip, thought, _Cain_ , and added more.

“Thank you, and agreed.” _Are you all right?_

“Am I—oh, that.” He’d mostly forgotten about the sprawling bruise, showing now beneath rolled-up shirtsleeves. “One of the recruits was lucky. And decently quick. But mostly lucky.” _Are YOU all right?_

“Sometimes I wonder if you’d be better off letting them spar with metal instead of wood, at least with you. Did you have Hank look at that?” Charles, without a spare hand, couldn’t reach over and touch him, but the brush of that mind felt like a caress regardless, phantom lips along his skin. _And…I don’t know, yet. I think I am. I mean…perhaps I ought to feel more, one way or the other. I don’t want him to die, and I don’t want to be the one to kill him, but…he made a choice. As I did._

Very privately, Erik considered that _he_ might not mind killing Cain if the chance presented itself. He’d seen the scars from Charles’s boyhood.

 _Stop that_. “We’ll be seeing him soon, in any case. The General wants us to find him. To neutralize the threat. However we see fit. I’m supposed to collect you, and whichever three or four of the recruits you’d like, and go…hunting for my inestimable stepbrother, I suppose. Tomorrow.”

 _Charles, I love you_. “Tomorrow?” His mind instantly leapt to all the things that would need doing: supplies, weaponry, horses, hauling Sean and Alex out of their chosen ale-tent of the night, finding a replacement for training the next day, asking Hank to look at Charles’s shoulder one more time…

“Tomorrow,” Charles echoed, quiet as the break in cannon-fire over the hills, _and I love you_ , and those bodiless lips came back and traveled along Erik’s wrist, up to his throat, his mouth, and then back down. And lower.

_Oh._

_Yes?_

_Are you sure you can? I mean—_ He touched Charles’s arm, gently, mindful of anywhere that might still be in pain. “Only if you’re sure.”

“I am.” _I_ _want you. I want you inside me and on top of me and here in our thoughts and making me scream your name when I’m right there, when you are, when we’re coming together. Erik. I love you._

Erik took the coffee-cup out of his hand, and set it securely on the writing-desk. Came back to the bed, put a hand on Charles’s face, palm cupping the nearest cheek. Said, very softly, _You can have all of me_ , and, when Charles smiled into his hand, bent down and kissed the smile, while outside the rain finally started to fall.


End file.
